Who they become (always depended only on them)
by starshine
Summary: Five times Ward dreamed, thought or saw Skye after the events of "who they become". Ward / Agent 33 brotp with eventual Skyeward.
1. Chapter 1

The first time he sees her, after, is in his dreams. He's back in the vault, and even in his sleep he has enough peripheral awareness to curse his head for taking him there. It's a bad place, small and constraining and dark and it makes his skin crawl with the feeling of powerlessness, just like his childhood home did, just like the well. He can feel the dread mounting up and he knows it won't be long until he can't stand the quietness and the hopelessness of it any longer, and he knows exactly what will happen then. Some of his memories from that time are fuzzed, but the moment he stood up against the far wall and started to run at he opposite one will forever be clear. Somehow in his dream, he knows it won't take long.

And then she's there, on the other side of the electric fence, looking like she desperately wants something from him (he offered and she kept asking, kept coming, he wasn't crazy to think she truly wanted it, so why was she so angry that he gave it to her, in the end?). He realizes that her being there is his lifeline, and that he won't get another one. He can't tell if he feels that way because she is Skye, or simply because he needs to know that he's still wanted, still needed for something. He's been alone with his thought for far too long. And she smiles and thanks him for being honest about her father and then tells him it's time they got him out of the cage, and the relief is so, so great (it's a bad place, he might be calmer now but it takes all he has, every hour and every second, to keep it that way), he also smiles at her and feels his heart speed up with hope the first time in forever.

And the thing is, knows it's too good to be true. He knows he won't be forgiven. But he pretends that being useful can be the same. It has to be. If he survives (and he will not survive in here, he knows this for a cold hard fact) he'll have to be useful, be good, be everything she wants from him. It can work out, for both of them. He can do things for her that nobody else can. Things that nobody else will want to.

"You should change out of these prison clothes," she says, and sure enough there are his own clothes waiting for him on the neatly done bed. He turns around to get them, and someone fires. One, two, three, four... There is no pain, just the instinct to duck kicking in, except there is no cover to be had and the danger is behind him. There is a hostile behind him, and how on Earth did he allow that one to happen? Why didn't he see them? He turns around, instinctively searching for Skye. The shooter must be right behind, and how didn't he see...

"Never turn your back to the enemy," she says.

He jerks once more. It doesn't hurt that much, it's more the shock. Something starts ringing in his ears, and even without comprehending what is going on he feels himself cringing away, trying to fight the sensation of being left wide open. Unprotected. His heart runs wild, and he...

Wakes up. They're on a highjacked Hydra jet. Agent 33 is flying. Ward wonders at her name. He never met her while he was with SHIELD, and never asked while pretending to be Hydra. Their unlikely alliance is not as bad as it would seem. He can provide a good enough hideout - he has plenty of them, and she isn't operational right now and will not think to seek her own. Still, that is the extent of things he will be able to do for her. He can't help her figure things out. He can't help even himself, the fact that he's bleeding out of not even one by put several wounds is proof enough of that. He truly thought he could make everything at least a little better. He wasn't asking for forgiveness, or full trust back or anything like that. He only wanted to make her wish come true, and then maybe she'd know he wasn't evil incarnate.

He doesn't know why it went wrong. He also doesn't think he'll figure it out, this time. He already gave this plan for making up to her his best shot for months, and obviously it's been all wrong. He truly doesn't think he can come up with any better. Admitting that is a bad mental place to be. Everything - the cell, the well, his childhood home - everything bad ever leads him to this place. Where nothing he can do himself is right, and there is nobody else to help him. Where he is stuck, and can't tell left from right and doesn't know who he even is, and it's so much easier to simply end it.

The woman with May's face ignores the little moan he cannot swallow as he checks his wounds. They aren't bleeding too copiously for now. He forces himself to fall asleep again.

He gets to relieve the same dream once again, and then again, and then once more. Every time he closes his eyes, he's trapped back in the vault and Skye is there. Everything plays the same way, and he is powerless to stop it. He turns his back on her every time she tells him to, despite him knowing how it will end up, knowing she is the shooter (enemy), despite the pain. The bullets hurt now, and every iteration makes it hurt some more, but it's not the worst about this. Worse is the dread, the turning around even as he knows what's gonna happen. He doesn't want to, and still he does it. There are dozens of bullets in him now, and he has learned his lesson. She is the enemy. He gets it. He wants to tell her this, tell her that he knows better now and will never again presume to hope for anything from her. That he was wrong to do so. That he realizes that he'd screwed up, again, but he still doesn't know why. That he gave it his best shot, and that he's sorry his best was nowhere good enough.

A part of him is wondering if she'll go for the head shot if he confesses all this to her, and so he doesn't. The loop goes on and on, and by the time he wakes up the pain in his side is so much worse and there is a bonus of an ugly, nauseous feeling. He hopes it's the dream aftershocks, but being awake doesn't make any of it better. A couple of minutes more, and he's on his hands and knees in the back of the jet, throwing up dark coagulated blood and hoping not-May doesn't see. She might decide he isn't worth the hassle after all, not with the internal bleeding, and he really isn't up to being shot in the back again today.

He will be spared the necessity to admit that he lied to her, though, so there is that.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time he doesn't see her, but he thinks of her, and it's the first time he does it with anger. It's a pretty uncomfortable reaction as he's sure that he doesn't have any right to that, not after everything he did to her, and thankfully he has more pressing matters to attend to and must not dwell on it. There are plenty of hideouts he can choose from, but he needs one that is far from civilization, soundproof and can safely contain a very violent and highly skilled occupant. He's been working as a double agent for ten years, though, so even such a specific place isn't a problem in itself. Getting 33 to collaborate with his plan is harder to archive. She is docile and withdrawn as she lands the cloaked jet, but he knows it won't last and he knows he will never be able to overpower her once the calmness passes. He no longer throws up blood, which is good, but as 33 noted after finding the mess on the floor, it doesn't have to mean anything yet.

"You might still be bleeding inside, just not throwing it up anymore. If you start again and it's black as coal, I will put you out of your misery."

Blood that ends up swallowed and digested is black as coal, he knows this too. The offer is a logical one, and she still has the weapon, so he simply shrugs.

"Just not in the back."

"Not in the back," she repeats, and he trusts her words instantly. Back shooting is for silent infiltration or (extremely rarely) an angry afterthought, and he can't imagine a seasoned agent needing to do this under any typical circumstances.

The hut is located on the outskirts of a small town. It has a tiny kitchen, an all purpose living space and an ample cellar that is reachable through a trap door in the kitchen floor. It's perfectly quiet and safe, except that now he has to convince 33 to follow his plan. He has given it some thought back on the jet, and he has figured the first all important first steps. She isn't going to like it and he's as good as dead if he spooks her and they end hashing it out, so sincerity is it.

"You are running on survival instinct. You lost your battle and had to retreat or die. Now that you're safe, you'll start thinking about what happened. You'll run through your options and find that while you have some, none appeal to you. You'll replay Whitehall's death in your head and wonder where it went wrong, and how you could have prevented it. You'll hate yourself for being useless to him at the time he needed you most. That hole that you have already felt inside yourself will start growing exponentially. One, maximum two days from now, you won't be able to think of anything else. You won't be able to sleep, eat, you'll wonder what you'll do without Whitehall, and you will realize that you have no answer to that question. Your survival will start to seem increasingly unnecessary as you will have no proper goals to look forward to, and around the third day you will very calmly take that gun and put a bullet in your head. This is how it ends. Unless we do something to prevent it."

Thankfully, she's not at that stage yet. She is quiet enough to give him hope that she is listening to him. That she still wants to survive this. Then again, right now she is as expressionless as May, so she might be readying herself for kill him in anger.

Ward finds that he doesn't care.

"You've seen it before?" She asks finally.

"Lived it before."

It took him much longer to come to that stage, but he's certain he isn't wrong in his assessment of the time they have left for 33. In his case, it simply took him a long time to feel safe enough to start thinking about Garrett's death. First there was all the shipping from place to place with a bag over his head and his injured throat threatening to close up and cut off his air. Then came the threat of interrogation, with Coulson himself coming down to see him. Ward reacted the only way he knew: he shut the hell down. The Academy instructor always wondered at how easily he picked up that particular skill. Truth was, he's been able to go away in his head for as long as he could remember.

How long did Coulson say it went on? Three weeks? He couldn't have said, thankfully. Because as soon as the director got fed up and left for good, as soon as Ward dared to come out of it and look around a little, it all crashed down. John's death, and naively trying to play for both sides, and Fitzsimmons, and Skye... He was lucky enough to have been such a dangerous threat with such high containment measures in place, because he had consistently given his death wish the best of tries and had been nearly successful with no tools at all.

Agent 33, in control of a gun, would come to the same result much more easily.

"I am not going to kill myself" she says. "I am going to look for Dr. Whitehall. It's a trick. He could very well have survived."

And yes, the delusional phase, he'd forgotten. It'll be quick, though. Successful specialists don't indulge in phantasies for long.

"He's dead," he says. "You know it, or you'd not have run away. It will get real bad, real fast, trust me. It'll get better after a while, though. You just have to hold on."

Lie, lie, lie. It won't get better. It's still on his mind frequently enough, but then maybe 33 is different. There is nothing inherently wrong with her, like there is with him. She didn't do anything wrong. She didn't ask for this. She might be able to recover and make right choices before all this is over, for all he knows.

He manages to talk her into giving him the bullets to her gun and go down into the cellar. It's a relief and a surprise. He makes sure there is enough light in there (the bulb is high enough so that she won't be able to reach it). He opens enough rations to last her a week and leaves them on the floor. Since it's a hiding place thought for lying low, there is a direct supply of water. He places a radio near the trapdoor so that she can hear it playing. He doesn't dare with books, even though what he did with that piece of paper was kind of extreme. He'd get her newspapers if he could walk to the nearby town, but he can't, which is a pity. The hideout also doesn't have any sedatives (normally any agent would know better than to indulge in them, no matter the problem at hand), just some painkillers and antibiotics, but he doesn't allow himself to dwell on it.

She helps obediently, which is a measure of how lost she is without her orders. By the time they are finished, he is exhausted enough to just want to drop onto the bed and pretty much pass out. He knows his body well enough to realize he's bled badly enough for him to take weeks to feel stronger again. The fact that he cannot move his right arm doesn't help at all.

He bolts the cellar door, and lingers on his knees for a long moment. He lied to her, but he doesn't want to have been lying. He doesn't have much hope. She is way too quiet, which means that she's thinking, hard. She's also as well trained as he is, and it took the entirety of SHIELD to prevent him from taking his life.

"Just remember that it will get better in a while. It may not feel like it, but that's the truth. You'll figure it out. You were a great agent, and you'll be one again soon enough," he tells her through the door.

The night and the next day are still relatively quiet. He gets up feeling worse than when he went to bed (cannot walk on his own at all without getting short of breath, so he mostly moves around holding the furniture). Coming up with something to eat seems too much of a chore. He sits down on the kitchen floor up and tries to talk to her instead. She's mostly quiet, but she moves around a little. He has questions to ask (he knows nothing of brainwashing, not even if she remembers her old self), but he worries that reminding her of her previous life might trigger her. So he settles for some platitudes, like the fact that Whitehall is dead but she isn't and she will find herself another mission soon enough, and that if she needs anything he'll get it for her. It sounds unnecessary and plain and stupid, but at least he isn't listing her failures and promising to ruin the rest of her life.

The radio is mostly music, and he changes the stations until he succeeds in getting her to tell him the one she prefers. Her voice is dry as desert and just as lifeless. It scares him more than he can afford to admit.

He wakes up in the middle of the second night to rhythmical thumping coming from the cellar. It's a soft, dull sound, and all the more ominous for it. The walls down there are wood and earth, and it's hard enough to actually inflict self damage using concrete, so he knows not to immediately worry. But time passes, and the dull sounds don't go away, and as he staggers to the trapdoor he starts to hear low, painful, horror-inducing noises. It's not a cry and not a wail but something way more primitive, a sound of unbearable pain made by a mindless creature without voice, a hollow moan of wordless suffering.

Another thud comes, and then another, and he cowers on the floor with half a mind set on opening the door and face her and half a mind on taking the jet and get as far away as possible. It hits way too close to home, and he cannot... He knows exactly what's going on downstairs. He knows exactly what she's feeling and doing and thinking in glorious detail, and he cannot stand witness to any of it and just do nothing. He cannot. It makes him sick on the inside, to sit there and listen, and soon enough he realizes that he's actually wispering useless strings of pleas that help nothing, and probably aren't even audible from the inside.

Thud.

"Please don't."

Thud.

He doesn't even know her name. He can't do anything right by himself, how the hell did he expect to help her?

Thud.

He can't just open the damn door and go down there. She'll kill him (not a great loss, all in all), but than she will kill herself as soon as she is free. He's in no shape to hope to stop her.

Thud.

He heaves a couple of times, which only brings more pain, but no blood - fresh or otherwise - come out. All he can do is sit there on the floor, huddling himself, and listen. He tries to talk more loudly and about something eventful for a change, but he knows that she is not able to listen in the state she's in. He talks anyway, about that time he doesn't really remember all that well. He promises her that she also won't remember. He tries to come up with things he might have wished for, himself, that might have calmed him and made him feel a lbit more hopeful when he was like that, but he realizes that he mostly wished for the world to fade away and that's not helpful at all.

Then he falls quiet, and realizes that she's quiet too. The low wailing animal sounds are gone, and hard as he'd wished for them to stop, the alternative is worse. He waits and waits, until dawn comes and he has no choice but to open the door and check, because it occurs to him that she might be badly hurt and he might still be able to help somehow.

He can't see very well from above, and when he tries to go down the ladder he ends up nearly falling after discovering he can't pull himself down one armed.

She is huddling in the far corner, hair and hands matted with blood. She looks up when she hears him, and her scarred face is devoid of all expression. She then looks at the stairs quite longingly, and Ward doesn't have it in himself to even pretend that he's up to stopping her.

"Please don't," he tells her quietly. She blinks.

"You had gone quiet," is her answer. She looks him over, like he's the one knocking on the death's door.

"You had, too."

"You cold?"

He nods, because he actually is. Had been for a long while now, the place has no heating. She stands up, looking relatively unharmed for what his imagination had conjured, and makes her way towards him. He does not bulge, and she also doesn't push him aside. She just looks at him for a while and checks his forehead and pokes him in his side matter of factly.

"Let's go upstairs." He still won't bulge, but she just pushes him away. "You're burning up. I can wait until you aren't dying."

Her medical training goes as far as to get him to drink a lot of water (he had avoided it, as he hadn't wanted to become nauseous again, but it was a mistake if he's truly running a fever) and feed him some instant noodle soup along with some antibiotics and Tylenol. She looks extremely unsure of herself, rummaging around the kitchen, and ends up piling all the knives and a couple of guns on the bed near him. He's now trusted enough to guard them against her, apparently. It feels nice, allowing himself to relax, and Ward floats in and out of consciousness, and only startles as she settles for the night on the floor near the bed (it's very cold in there, and she makes him take the bed again). He turns onto his side and puts his functioning hand on her shoulder.

"Stay there," he says, and she does.

It's damn uncomfortable, and he cannot get his mind to shut down, so he stays awake for a long time despite the fever and exhaustion. He can't help his mind drifting to his own experiences. He thinks back to his own scars while cursing himself for failing to properly check hers, and that uncomfortable time he'd had to explain them to Skye. She told him that he should have run faster. It never occurred him to wonder about that line before, but he thinks about it now and it makes him sick again, remembering the noises 33 made. She didn't even sound like a person, just something barely alive and so very deeply hurt, the only way to stop the pain was to keep inflicting it until you came through on the other side. He tries to imagine just what kind of hatred would make him tell 33 something like what Skye told him, and he can't. Even if she had been a fully competent and merciless enemy to him before, she hadn't been anything like that down there. She'd just been a very very sick person.

And the thing is, he himself couldn't have looked and behaved too differently, but he still distinctly recalls Coulson standing by his side after he woke up in full body restraints and coldly telling him he wouldn't get out of his hands so easily. He thinks about everything he's done to deserve that one, and it's not like there aren't heaps of dirt to choose from, but for all he tries he still can't really see it. If he wanted 33 to pay for something she'd done, he's pretty sure he'd wait until she was herself again and not half out of her mind with... whatever.

He wonders if he should feel angry at Coulson for treating him like that (the unsavory thing with Christian also comes to mind), but he actually doesn't. From the beginning, he didn't really expect mercy from the man, should Garrett's mission fail. Skye, though... He'd always thought she was so different. And it could yet be that her bullets end up killing him, but somehow that one sentence from months ago feels so much worse. It had rolled off him like everything else she had done recently, but in hindsight...

In hindsight, it hurts. A lot. And he does feel kind of angry. He hasn't ever felt truly angry at anyone, except very recently at his parents and Christian, which is why it terrifies him to even open that door with Skye. He tells himself firmly that he has no right to think that way, and that is the end of it. Agent 33 breathes evenly under his hand, which is more that he'd excepted to achieve by now, and he concentrates on that feeling.


	3. Chapter 3

The third time he actually sees her. It's months later, and they have run three successful missions with Agent Palamas. He's still doing slower than he likes in this training routine and runs less than he is used to, and has no idea if he should push himself more or give himself a break. If he belonged somewhere, he'd be getting precise instructions on how to right himself and he'd be ready in half this time, but there is nothing to be done about it now. He's confident he'll figure it out by himself in time.

Agent Palamas does much better. Whitehall's treatment has left her with a very strong dissociation in her mind. She does remember SHIELD, her reasons to join, her admiration for the agency. She does know right from wrong. Her bond with Whitehall is purely emotional, as all she can say about her attachment was that she felt an overwhelming desire to please him. As long as he was alive, his words overwrote everything.

Her "rough path" lasts about three weeks. Ward's collapsed lung and consequent pneumonia kept her mind off the worst of it in the beginning. She held off until after he got well enough to walk by himself, but then she just crashed again. She trusted him a little more by then, though, and he had managed to walk her through the worst of it without spilling any blood and forcing any cellar time on her. He didn't come up with anything too fancy. Workouts until she almost passed out, mostly. Reading aloud to him - dull as the books they had inside the hut proved to be, they did the trick. Sitting quietly with nothing to do was the worst thing ever, and he dutifully made sure she was never left alone.

By the end of it all she is cranky, foul and mean, but no longer unstable. She also talks increasingly more, which intrigues him. Her face is that of May, and while he knows he shouldn't, at first it's hard not to think of her as such. May was never one for small talk, though. Agent Palamas does it all the time. She hates Hydra, now. Or at least thinks she is obliged to denounce it as loudly and as often as she is able (Ward has no way to know what she truly thinks). She knows what they did to her, intellectually. Emotionally, he suspects the attachment is still very present even on her good days.

One of the first things she does, when they both decide that she is through the worst of it, is to ask him if he's ever afraid he'd end going back to Hydra. It's a trickier question than it sounds. The short answer is no, but the reasons behind it aren't strong enough and Ward knows it. Before, he'd never go to Hydra because he knew what Skye would think of it. Now that worry is no longer on his mind. He still doesn't imagine himself willingly working for them again. It is a nasty place with nasty people who do very nasty things, he knows this for a fact. Quite sadly, every other agency he knows (SHIELD' black Ops definitely included) is just as nasty overall, with its own share of extremely unsavory people and never far away from engaging in every illegal activity known to man in order to promote its noble goals.

The only difference he can think of is that some agencies are way better with their propaganda than some others.

He can't tell any of that to Agent Palamas, though, because she was a dedicated SHIELD agent once and is firmly on her way to become one once again. And the moral stand of SHIELD and Hydra isn't Ward's main problem anyway. His problem, the thing that scares him the most, is that he cannot trust himself. Not after what happened. His course of action made complete sense in his head, but obviously it was all terribly wrong (he has scars that aren't fully healed yet to prove it). And it's not the first time that this has happened. He had never been able to firmly tell reality from lies. Not as a child who let his brother talk him into doing terrible things, not as a teen who went with Garrett, not even as an adult as it seems. There is a pattern there. A rather terrifying one. He cannot function on his own, he needs someone to guide him. It must be why he always ends up doing someone else's bidding. If he can't seem to do anything right on his own, how can he be sure Hydra won't put it's clutches into him without him even realizing? He can't. He hates the feeling.

And if at least he could be sure to follow someone who is a good person, someone that he could trust... But Skye didn't want to have him, and Agent Palamas isn't well enough to burden her with this. She will get there, he's sure, but for now she still looks up to him even knowing full well he'd managed to double cross two rival agencies trying to please two people who either beat him up or shot him in the back. Literally.

"I am afraid that they can convince me to come back," he hears her say. "Find someone who looks like Whitehall, who has a similar name, I don't know. But I am scared shitless."

"So what do you propose?"

It's his standard answer to anything and everything she says. Sometimes she will wander around a topic, clearly trying to get somewhere but not quite managing it. He knows better now than to suggest anything himself, because she'll latch onto his words immediately. As long as he keeps quiet, she might end up proposing things herself. Like now.

"We take them down. Or hurt them bad enough to make sure they will never dream of recruiting us again. Just shoot to kill on sight wherever they see us."

That's way too aggressive for his tastes, as well as premature both physically for him and mentally for her. But it's the first active idea she's formulated on her own that is more complex than writing their grocery shopping list, and he really wants to honor it. He spends two days holding back and carefully mulling on her plan, knowing how tempting it can be to think you have it all finally figured out. He doesn't want her to hope it'll solve anything for her in the long run, like he did. It's a good exercise, though, which is how they end up descending on a couple of Hydra bases with all the mercilessness of old SHIELD but zero of its conviction. It feels good, to be quick on his feet again, They celebrate their hit in some dingy bar somewhere, and for a while life is simple and they are busy enough to keep their minds off things.

As soon as they start making enough noise, SHIELD is onto them. Ward avoids all contact carefully, and there are never any uncomfortable encounters. His companion is more used to open action and less familiar with deep covers and tracking from afar. He doesn't always tell her of their trails, and the shame grows with each omitted truth. He knows perfectly well that SHIELD's mistrust of her is mostly due to him. Had they parted ways long ago, Coulson'd be probably feeling her out and tentatively accepting her back. SHIELD needs good operatives. They'll have her gladly as soon as she is fully operational again. Some nights, he thinks back on the moment he convinced her to come with him, and the shame grows. She could have stayed back at the base. Chances are, SHIELD would have found her and this time taken her in. She'd have a real shrink at her disposal, and not him.

She makes astounding progress all by herself, though. She has her main priorities straight, is focused and can plan for simple things she wants that aren't missions. She goes weeks being almost normal as long as hey keep to themselves, but she can't really interact with normal people anymore, as they are consistently freaked out by her horrendous face scar, which still leads to breakdowns. Sometimes they come out of nowhere, thought the last one was brought on by her bringing a guy to her room and him accidentally wiping away her makeup before she could dim the lights. It's not vanity, he knows. The scar, had it been on her true face, would hardly bother her. It's the identity loss that sets her off, the same way Ward sometimes gets tense and angry just by looking at his wrists.

Still, she's doing very well. She's already almost more functional than him, and it's been only three month after half a year of brainwashing and forced servitude. Ward tells her that, that night when she's curled in a ball on the bathroom floor, hissing and promising to strangle him with the shower curtains should he come closer. He doesn't think she hears him, and that's probably for the better because it sounds rather jealous to his own ears.

The next day, when she is calm again, she looks at him quite solemnly and asks how long he's been with Garrett.

"Fifteen years."

It feels a little weird to tell the number out loud. He's told Skye everything about Garrett. Everything she wanted to know about him, anyway, which wasn't much. She never asked how long. Kara seems to think it's quite important, though.

"There you have it, then. Of course it'll take you longer. About seven years, give or take".

She's attempting to joke, which she does from time to time now, but the topic is important enough for Ward to let it go.

"It's different, I wasn't brainwashed," he tells her patiently. He's said the words to her before, but this is the first time he continues the tale a little longer. "I wanted it. I... went with him. Willingly." He smiles a little to let her know it's no big deal, but shame coils inside his chest and burns worse than any bullet ever did. She's blameless. She's a hero, a prisoner, a victim. She will prevail. She's almost there already. He, on the other hand... He can't ever "get there", because there was never any "there" to get back to. He's always been like he is now.

"Of course it's different. You aren't remembering things, you're learning them for the first time. You'll need more time, obviously."

It feels too damn good to hear that, he doesn't want to contradict her words. They feel even better for the fact that she now knows the one thing about him and Garrett that Ward'd hoped to never tell anyone (he'd have told Skye, of course, but she never asked), and she's still with him.

So anyway, Skye finds him on one rather uneventful morning. He's minding his own business, no weaponry in sight. She's clad in black, sacrificing subtlety in a play for intimidation. She wants him to raise his hands, and he obeys without delay, which puts a triumphant smirk on her face.

"Learned your lesson?"

He nods, because he has. He's fully expecting her to put a bullet in his head, for no reason at all. It would be a very poor strategy, but he's seen (and felt) her make poorer decisions, so he hopes for a better outcome and waits patiently while checking for her reinforcements and ways to keep her in check should she put her weapon away (she doesn't). He counts anyway: three easy ones, four more that would lead to harm for her, which he doesn't want to use but will go for, it need arises. None would come anywhere close to endangering her life.

"So what have you been up to? Some more blood on your hands? Family members to kill? Kidnapped any poor girls who look like me?"

She goes on a tirade that doesn't make any sense, either in content or strategically. He lets her. Humbleness before you enemies is the first thing a spy learns. Posturing will bring you nothing. Weird that May still haven't told her that. Eventually the list of his imagined wrongdoings comes to an end, and her discourse changes a little. He learns that SHIELD have been keeping tabs on him (she tries to make it sound more successful than it ever was, seeing he and Agent Palamas have been up and down New Zealand and the West Coast blowing stuff up and SHIELD didn't even notice). She then turns her words around once more to mention that Ward might get the thing he wishes for. Sensing the important part finally coming up, he listens.

They have decided to let him help them out, it seems. Nothing that requires trust or even direct contact with SHIELD. A side mission for one, a dirty one at that, so he may prove his value and his good will. She will then decide if he's to be trusted enough to maintain further contact.

Then she falls quiet, one hand on the trigger and the other one on her hip, lips pursed and face closed off. Apparently, it's his time to talk. Ward licks his lips, because this - this is complicated and he doesn't want to screw it up. He's done enough of that for his entire lifetime.

"I'm sorry for what I've done to you," he starts. This is the easy part. He'd made mistakes, and it doesn't cost him anything admit it now that he knows exactly what they were. "That thing with your father... I decided single-handedly that meeting him was exactly what you wanted and forced it on you... More than one time. I was..." He closes his eyes, because it's difficult.

"How long would it take for you to fully use a broken leg?" He'd asked Kara once.

"A coupe of months minimum. Three or four more like it."

"What makes you think your mind is different?"

It was a very simple question, but it did give him a ton of peace of mind when thinking back about his first wobbly steps outside of his underground prison. More importantly, it gave him enough confidence back to try and form some future decisions again. He knows now that he shouldn't have tried to make that kind of important decisions all alone and still bleeding after banging his head against the walls. Explaining it all to Skye would take too long, though, and look too much like he is fishing for pitiful excuses. And she probably doesn't want to hear any of it, anyway.

"I know I told you I had it all figured out, and I didn't really lie, I just didn't quite realized for myself that I wasn't alright yet. I never meant to hurt or upset you, I was only trying to just do something right. By anyone really, but then nobody would even let me try. Except you. I though that you would, and I thought that if I could do something right for you, it'd help." He's done talking, but she is still looking at him expectantly, as though she's awaiting something else, so he scrambles upon realizing this. "Evidently it came out wrong. I am very sorry, and I won't bother you anymore, I promise."

She shakes her head with impatience, as if his apology and his holding back is bothering her.

"You aren't bothering," she says it like it pains her. "You're being given another chance. Your mission parameters are..."

"Good bye, Skye."

He doesn't need to think about these words at all. He feels unsafe with her, and he knows better than to take a mission from somebody who sets off all his warning bells. It's basic training. He backs off, but doesn't turn around. In fact, he wonders if that head shot might just come searching for him now, but something else happens instead. She panics. Truly panics, flails around for something he can't begin to guess at and her confusion at his refusal is clear as day in her eyes. She looks at him, around him, visibly regroups (she telegraphs her moves under pressure still, it's kind of a pity, he should tell her that but she didn't like it when he complimented her skills so there is no telling how she'll take critique). She then finally comes up with a new strategy, which to Ward's horror consists of a pair of increasingly wet eyes, her hands on his chest, and her face coming closer to his while looking up at him pleadingly.

"I need your help," she says, and he can feel her fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. It makes him want to recoil. It's a bad play, pretty similar to the one she pulled in the vault to make him do the exact thing he had been asking to be allowed to do for weeks, actually. She doesn't even realize her left palm is pressed over two of his new wounds. They aren't painful per se, but pressing is uncomfortable enough for him to take a step back once again.

She'd told him once that he was acting like a rejected pet bringing dead mice to his owner. He's pretty sure she'd get the reference, but he doesn't have it in him to remind her of that as she is now the one who is doing the unwanted offerings.

"Please don't," he manages quietly, and then simply turns away and exits through the back door.


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth time he sees Skye, it takes some careful planning on his part that goes on for a better part of a month. Not that he plans for seeing her, he knows to keep his safety distance from everything and everyone with a SHIELD logo on them, generally. This meeting is just another inevitable side effect of this particular plan of his, and he'd alright with it just as he's alright with everything that will probably happen after this point.

He shadows SHIELD for weeks, then tips their hand by leaving them undermanned for the mission they were planning on. It's time sensitive, and they can't pull it off without a highly experienced sniper covering for them. The infiltration of the compound calls for some four guards to be eliminated from almost one kilometer distance, and the valley where the entire base is located is known for its foul, windy weather. SHIELD's position is bad enough so that they'd need to forfeit or risk a massacre. Which is when he approaches May.

She's predictable as always, but thankfully they move past the deadpan threats steadily enough. It's weird, seeing Kara's face on somebody else. He knows it's just the opposite, but he's worked with Kara longer than with May by now, and she feels hundred times more real to him. That she actually laughs and emotes to the point where Ward can comfortably tell what she is thinking doesn't help him with May's identical but expressionless features. He doesn't need to decipher May's moods anymore, though.

(There was a time when Kara had been rather fascinated by her unwilling twin, and dead set on finding out what had happened between Ward and her. The simple fact of them sleeping together wouldn't satisfy her, and she kept insisting of knowing his "real reason", which he had finally been forced to give to her in a succinct but deadly honest manner.

"I was afraid of her," he says and thankfully Kara never brings it up again.)

Now, he simply names his price to May, and only grins when she realizes he was the one who messed with her team. Thing is, his "price" is very reasonable, something that May would give him willingly if she thought he wanted it. She must be really tired of having another woman running around the globe with her own face. Ward and Kara have tried, in the beginning, but every underground surgeon they ever traced told them the electronics have been fused, and operation was a no go.

Well, maybe it wasn't a a medical but an engineering problem. Who knows, it's worth a shot. He leaves May to convince Fitzsimmons to take a look at Kara's face, and occupies himself with breaking the news to Kara. Last time he had tried to organize a complex favor for somebody he cared about, it ended with him bleeding out on the floor, so he's kind of weary of her reaction. She keeps insisting that her appearance is trivial to her, but he knows better. It's hard to let go of the past when it stares at you every morning from the mirror. And even if it didn't, she needs over an hour every day to put the makeup on. It just isn't practical in their line of work.

"I'm not letting them sedate me," she says immediately. "I don't trust them, not at all."

He promises to stand guard by her side during the procedure, and this is how he ends inside the Bus for the first time in over a year, arms crossed and leaning on the side of the Fitzsimmons lab while they fuss over the peacefully sleeping "creepy fake May" as they have taken to calling her. At the beginning of the rendezvous they had done their best to ignore his presence, but now they are enthusiastically engrossed in the particularities of the mask design and not even an earthquake would phase them. From some of the comments, he can infer they have some real hope that the mask will come off.

He smiles a little. Kara is her own person again. Has been for quite some time. Sure, she still gets bouts of depression, she still wakes up confused in the night and tries to reach her Hydra contacts before she can remember. But otherwise, she is her previous self. She walked the road and she came back exactly the same noble, fearless, faithful person. She deserves this, and he's happy to give it to her.

The operation goes on for a couple of hours. Ward stands guard over the sleeping patient, and May and the female agent who shadowed him on the bus right after he broke free for the vault stand guard over him. They are airborne, which he supposes is another precaution, and everyone on the plane seems tense and rather unhappy. Except him. He's as tense as he could ever get, but he doesn't allow himself to seem that way. He's brought a book, and sometime down the road he slips onto the floor and starts reading (they won't do anything until the landing, that he knows). Sometime later May disappears and only the other agent stays. Ward continues to religiously turn his pages for all he isn't reading anything on them. One of the times he turns one he looks up and the girl smirks at him knowingly. He smirks right back. It's not hostile at all, more of a gentlemanly exchange, and he's put enough at ease by her absence of open hostility to slowly get up and come nearer the operation theater. He can't see Kara's face very well, but the regular sounds of the machines connected to her body and Simmons' cheerful tone make him confident all's going to end well.

They stop for lunch after a couple of hours. The cowboy from the bus station appears to tell them all to gather for it, and they go. Simmons tells him to keep an eye on the readings while she is out, and Ward happily nods. The cowboy guy follows everyone to the common room where sandwiches are waiting, but doubles back.

"You wanna one?" He asks completely nonchalantly. "I can bring you a ham and cheese one."

Ward grins, because the guy seems both a little clueless and very dangerous if pissed, and it's kind of refreshing to know his file hasn't been made into required reading for all the new recruits to hate on instinctively.

"May will rip you head off," he warns good naturally.

"They will be at it for a long time still."

Ward has extensive experience in going for weeks without eating, so skipping lunch does not even register as a problem with him. He's now sure the guy isn't an agent, which might explain his willingness to share food with him. The female spy calls to him from the common room (his name is Hunter) and he shrugs and goes, and Ward is left alone to contemplate the raising and falling down of Kara's chest. He's happy to do this for her. He is. And it might yet not end too badly.

Four more hours go by, and finally after some triumphant exclamations it's over and Kara starts to wake. Simmons fusses around her, helping her up, with Fitz not too far behind - the rests of the mask in his hands. Ward wants to see, but doesn't move from his place. He remembers suddenly that he's never seen one picture of her before the accident, and is confronted with the realization that he might be up to meeting a complete stranger.

"Grant?" She's looking around, a bit disoriented from the sedation.

"Here," he calls. She grins. She's still turned backwards from him, but he knows it for a fact. Then she turns toward his voice, and he tries very hard not to stare.

"How do I look?"

He chews on his lower lip, and ends up staring. She stares back at him too, but she has a mirror in her hand, so Ward knows she's seen herself already.

"Well... I'm sure it will get better soon enough," he starts, ignoring the murderous look Simmons sends his way. "And if not, at least you're unique again."

She grins again through intense swelling that is now deforming the entirety of her face. Her eyelids are puffy, her lips are cracked and deformed, and her cheeks have red streaks on them. She's definitely no longer a May twin, and the scar is also gone, but he still can't imagine how she will look like once the swelling is gone from her skin.

"You're supposed to complement me, you doofus," she berates him. By now he knows she's playing him, and that she's very happy. He is, too. The sheer relief of it working, of him being partly responsible of bringing that excited playful tone into her voice, is embriagating.

"You mean, lie?" He insists.

"Yes."

"Sorry," he laughs. "You're not one of my marks."

She jumps off the table at that. Thanks Fitzsimmons effusively, but with every word she migrates closer to him. It's time to hightail, there is no need to say the words to know it. The plane has landed as soon as the sedation had been stopped (they'd been flying in circles as an additional precaution against whatever SHIELD thinks Ward might be up to).

They walk to the exit, and Ward keeps his hand between Kara's shoulder blades. She is a bit unstable on her feet after the sedation, and she had some unpleasant freak outs in the past, so he's unwilling to let her alone. They get to the cargo hold and wait while the ramp opens. Then is when the surprise comes. After Kara woke and not much else happened, Ward had hoped that maybe it'd be the end of it. But the cargo hold opens revealing Coulson in full directorial suit standing there, with Skye in classical bodyguard position - to the right of him and two steps behind -, and that hope goes through the window.

That's it, then.

Coulson is holding himself as his usual bland self, benign and unassuming. He's smiling at Kara, and if he could be more transparent with this, Ward would be able to see through him. Skye is trailing him, clad in the same black outfit he last saw her in and just as weaponized, but she's no longer strung high. In fact, she looks tired and drown, and while she is attentive and collected, he has the feeling that her heart isn't on the mission. At all. She looks at Kara, sizing her up, and then she looks at him. And once again, she doesn't seem upset or angry or even closed off. She seems too tired to bother with any such emotion.

She does trail Coulson almost on autopilot, though. They come closer, and Ward stays two steps behind, which makes him mirror Skye's position. It then becomes obvious that Kara knows Coulson personally, because he smiles at her again (at that stranger's face he knows and Ward does not, and isn't it a perfect foretelling of what is about to happen here) and she nods politely in return, and Director of SHIELD and Agent 33 shake hands. He tells her how happy he is that she is alive and well, and that it is a pleasure to welcome her back into the Agency. This is a conversation Ward had wholeheartedly expected to happen since before he made the deal for Kara's face, but it still doesn't take the sting off the fact that they are doing this right in front of him. He and Kara have come on board as allies, and it's rather bad taste to make a bid at switching her allegiances in his face. If Coulson manages to persuade her to join SHIELD now, Ward's be left outnumbered, and chances are Kara's loyalty test would be to put him down. Which, again, all predictable and all, but he can't avoid thinking they could have at least gone to Coulson's office, or something.

(He has a couple of guarantees in place - he'd left instructions ready for US Military to get the coordinates of the "secret" SHIELD Headquarters base should he not come back from this. He'd be a fool and an appalling agent is he'd boarded the plane without precautions. But they are cocky enough when it comes to him to not stop and think before doing something stupid. Ward wonders if he should verbally warn them against screwing with him, and decides against it. If they are so incompetent as to try to cross him off expecting no consequences, they deserve their Headquarters be blown. Kara knows of his precautions, anyway, so even if she turns SHIELD right now she'll still let him go. For now. He doesn't want to think about them being on different sides of this down the road, and so he doesn't.)

"I am honored that you'd want me back, sir," she says, and Ward smiles briefly, because much as it hurts, she belongs somewhere good, and he knows has been keeping her back.

"We'll discuss everything that happened in detail. You'll get a fair treatment," promises Coulson.

"I am already getting a very good treatment," she answers. "So I will have to decline."

She turns back to Ward with a little motion of let's go. He hesitates, because he knows without looking back that May's just pulled her gun on him. He knows because of Skye's little frown in May's general direction. Kara simply looks at him like he's being slow.

"Come on, let's be on our way."

He's sorry now that he hasn't said a nice word to her about this new face, but he'd prefer to do it privately anyway. Now isn't the time anyway, as a cloud of anger comes over everyone present at her words. Coulson stops smiling. May cocks her weapon. Skye tenses up, looking into each of their faces with open worry.

"She's still brainwashed, just loyal to Ward," says May, reciting what everyone must be thinking right now.

Kara turns around, an odd expression Ward can't read on a face he doesn't recognize, and suddenly she is in May's space, punching her in her face and disarming her in one movement. Which he should have seen coming, Ward guesses. Kara Palamas wasn't formidable because she wore May's face. She is pretty formidable on her own.

(He hopes it doesn't go further than this, though. He doesn't trust Skye not to shoot them both, should the violence escalate, Headquarters be damned. She did shoot him on a Hydra base she had no hope of leaving on her own, after all.)

Skye doesn't shoot anyone, though, probably because she is too stunned by the sight of an angry Kara right up in May's face, screaming murder at her about all and every dirty hidden SHIELD procedure ever known to man. She screams about how they abandoned her, left her behind once, then twice, despite knowing fully well that she was a prisoner of Hydra. She screams that she'd been tortured. That they abandoned her to her torments, made funny jokes at her expense. That she remembers everything. Or did they think she'd forgotten? That loyalty runs both ways. That she was expendable to them until she sorted herself out, until she was fully operational again. Now they want her on their team? They think to offer it like some kind of favor? Double dealing, slimy opportunistic backstabbing bunch is what they are.

The last words aren't directed at May, but at Coulson, who just stays there very quietly, slowly becoming rather white in the face. It's kind of glorious, and Ward can't take his eyes off this fierce stranger who's taken all of Kara's hurt and proceeded to use it to make herself stronger. There are some things that she tells them that are same things she'd told him. Others are new. All make perfect sense. Some are even things Ward would gladly tell Coulson himself, if he thought he had some moral right to it. Like for example, that had one single person stopped by his side while he laid there in restraints with his head bleeding, and just given him a tiny hint in the freaking right direction, he wouldn't have flailed for months afterwards to only mess up again despite the best of intentions.

When Kara stops raging, they go. His hand is once again between her shoulder blades, and if the bus crew takes it as further confirmation of his "brainwashing" of her - Ward truly doesn't care. "You lost your opportunity," he points out when they take off. It's her turn to take it easy, so he is the one to fly. He flaunts the fact that they have their own jet a little, leaving cloaking off, but that's alright. As for his words, he makes the, sound like a joke, but they aren't. Not really.

She looks at him with solemn eyes, and for the first time he recognizes her as his Kara. The color of skin and the still puffy features might be different, but the sudden serious expression is exactly the one he had grown accustomed to see directed at himself during these first weeks as he explained to her why it was important she chose her own shampoo and brand of cereal.

"I don't sleep with people I am afraid of," she says defiantly, and while it stings a little she is also right. He'd spend his life trying to make good with people who had the power to hurt him, and strangely enough it never brought him anything but that same pain he'd been trying to avoid. Making nice with SHIELD would protect Kara, but also make her dependent on them, and not always in a good way. It's kind of obvious in retrospective (Christian, Garrett, Whitehall, Coulson, SHIELD, Hydra - they all wanted portions of one's soul in exchange for their care), but still it takes enormous strength to recognize and walk away from.

He maneuvers the jet around before the take off, and it puts him face to face with Skye again. She had trailed them to their transport, for once simply following from a distance and not pointing any kind of weapon at them. With everything that was going on with Kara he hadn't even given her much thought nor spoken to her (nor she to him). But her face is still whiter than Coulson's had been, and for some reason it occurs to Ward that maybe she's making nice while being afraid too. That maybe they all are, each and every person who swore absolute loyalty to an absolute cause once, and now doesn't know how to take their own soul back.

He looks at Skye again while finishing the preflight checks, but she's slowly walking back to Coulson. He's sure he's being ridiculous anyway. Skye is obviously Coulson's right hand woman now. She has no reason to fear him. No reason at all.


	5. Chapter 5

The end of the year comes when Ward is in Sharm-el-Sheikh. How he got there is a longish story. He's on his own, has been for about two months now. Kara had wanted to take a commission that would need a long term (read: over a month) commitment, and also didn't really need a two man team, so they'd split up. Ward is all for diversity these days, he takes job after job and not one is similar to the previous. It's a good strategy, because it makes his reputation quickly known in diverse and useful circles, and he's much more at ease with having multiple options than just a short while ago. He gets the hang of choosing - based on gut feeling, based on whether he likes the bidder, based on resources and potential bloodshed or lack thereof. Hell - he'd even vetted a job based on world region and the weather forecast there.

His last job is a smuggling ring out of Afghanistan. The beauty of it is that he doesn't need to go there at all. He comfortably establishes his observation center at the middle point of the smuggling route - Sharm-el-Sheikh is crawling with rich tourists in search of nice warm beaches, awesome coral reefs and illegally exported historical curiosities - and waits for the goods to come to him. He is supposed to recover a stone piece that was robbed from a collection. There are bound to be loads of other items, though, as well as some old fashioned opium, so he hasn't decided on the cleaning up part of the op yet.

The smugglers, when he finds them, prove to be a loud, cruel and well armed lot, the kind that makes normal folk cross the street when confronted with them. It's a little bit pathetic, really. Child's play for a SHIELD operative. Or a Hydra one. Basically, for anyone who is willing to spend some weeks taking down the goddamned ring. The lack of takedown volunteers is obvious in the way the guys walk around the town like they own the place - it looks like the dozens of governmental agencies that operate in the region all have better things to do. Probably plotting against each other, Kara's voice says in his head, and he smiles.

The way in and out of their warehouse ends up paved with bodies, a small round bullet hole in each one of them. Ward finds the infamous stone (it's a literal stone, fancily carved by an ancient culture but a goddamned stone with no paranormal properties nonetheless - the fact that someone is willing to pay the price of a small nuclear device for it is befuddles him) along with three cages containing dirty, weak and drugged to the eyeballs teen girls. Ward anonymously alerts the authorities and hopes for the best.

The stone is quickly passed on to its grateful owner, and he's is all set to hightail out of the region as per his standard procedure, but for one tiny detail. The smugglers had come from the sea, and watching their route had entailed a lot of port surveillance. He had gone with the simplest option for that one: a forged ID as a diving instructor and a place on one of the touristic ships that made daily snorkeling tours out to the coral reefs and, time and clients permitting, diving tours to the deeper places of the Red Sea. The company he got involved with was run out of the biggest five stars hotel of the region. The boat owner was a smooth, business oriented guy who valued the high standards of his trade enough to be atypically-for-the-region legal about it. Long story short, if Ward simply disappeared from his radar one day, specially considering that he'd appropriated and consequently broken the scuba gear in his storming of the warehouse, the guy'd come to the unwanted conclusion that his employee had taken the equipment for a joyride and promptly drowned.

A local news announcement and an underwater search for his dead body isn't something Ward wants to risk, and so he comes up to his boss first thing in the morning, confesses to the unsanctioned use and destruction of the gear, assures the man that he will be gone of his own free will and offers his yet unpaid December salary as payment.

Much to his surprise, the man is unimpressed. It turns out the company isn't looking to replace Ward with another diving instructor anytime soon. It makes sense, and he already knew that he was a good investment for them - 6 languages under his belt and an impeccable eye for making nice with even the hardest marks (customers) seem to be as highly esteemed qualities in the tourist business as they are in the spy one. Further assurances to Tariq that he doesn't really want to stay earn Ward a counteroffer of a fat money raise, but what starts swaying him is the sheer eagerness of his employer.

He's been mercilessly ordered to do things for no reason at all during the most part of his life. Lately, he's become used to negotiate the things he'll end up doing. He does not quite know what to do with the fact that people will all but beg him to do stuff that isn't even on his qualifications list. So he asks for an hour, ignoring the fact that his plane ticket is in his pocket already, walks to the harbor, gets himself an overpriced local cocktail and thinks.

Tariq wants him to stay the high season - which this side of the world usually means the winter months. He doesn't have any other job lined up, so there is no obvious reason to say no. There isn't a good reason to say yes, though. Two months of regular civil work at admittedly very good diving instructor salary sound doable - except what does he need the money for? A couple grand is nothing compared to the amounts of money a specialist is accustomed to move every month. It's not to say that military contract work will make one richer - the turnaround of what must be spent to buy gear, fake papers and secure hiding places makes quick work of the winnings in the end.

He feels bad for leaving these folks hanging, though. And he likes the sea, the sun, the simplicity of it. Diving took care of the last vestiges of his injury, and his lung capacity is better now than it ever was. His chest scars are readily visible because shirtless is the standard gentleman's attire around these parts of the world, but the story of a retired soldier holds up nicely in the face of a couple of round bullet holes. It's the other scars that tell a very different story that must be hidden, but again - it's not strange to wear hand and wrists protectors when working on a boat. He thinks and thinks, and funnily enough by the time his drink is through he has a plan in his mind that he actually likes a lot. He'll stay the winter months, and he'll save the civil salary to get a good plastic surgeon take a look at his wrists. It's not something that he needs, per se, but it's something nice to do for himself - sort of like a gift. A Grant Ward equivalent of doing extra hours while saving for a high tech TV.

He thinks Kara would be proud, and she probably is, but he can't really tell because she actually laughs her head off when he tells her this. She surfaces when December is about to end and is openly impressed with his gig. The hotel Ward works for throws a New Year party that costs over 300 dollars for its guests, and Ward secures them two free tickets from Tariq through a bet. There is a big party of almost university graduates celebrating their upcoming careers, and it takes him only half an hour to befriend the top girls from the trip organizing committee. Another half an hour and the horde is booked for a private snorkeling tour for fifty, which makes both Tariq and Kara very happy.

Which is how they end up celebrating the New Year together in the tropical tourist town of Sharm-el-Sheikh. The champagne and the seafood are excellent, and Kara is rocking her unblemished own face, her new short haircut and her well defined body in a backless red dress by flirting with two guys at once. Ward observes her from his corner, and it occurs to him that while this last year has mostly been literal hell, he's actually looking forward to the next one. The simple fact that there is nothing weighing him down is awesome on its own.

Which is when Kara appears from the left and proceeds to make herself comfortable on his lap while helping herself to his food and drink.

"Having fun?" She asks brightly.

"It's OK," he smiles, and she doesn't pester him further. Ward isn't one for grand gestures or bubbly exclamations of effusive fun, and she knows this well enough to read the smile and be happy for him. "Your friends are gonna get jealous," he points out to her as she makes herself even more comfortable.

She moves her hand to open the top button of his formal shirt and loose the tie a little.

"They'd be wrong. No sex with the hottest guy in the room is our first rule."

"Our only rule," he grins. He likes Kara way too much to screw with her that way, and even if he didn't - the idea of getting into bed with someone mostly makes him feel like he's after a mark again. "You planning to choose any time soon or you're gonna go for both?"

"Scandalized?"

"It'll be your loss. They look like they are a bit too interested in each other."

"I'll take the risk. Gotta do something memorable to say goodbye to this sorry excuse of a year."

"Keep me updated."

"Should I liveblog the details?" she counters, and that's as far as they both go with straight faces before breaking up laughing. Kara jumps off him and waives to the guys, and looks all set and eager for some saucy adventure. She does linger a bit, though, ruffling Ward's hair. It's long enough again to bother with some styling.

"The girls from the organizing committee have a bet on which one will get you in her bed tonight. The main moves will start after they are all done dancing."

"I know."

"The one in the blue dress seems sweet... and interested. Beyond the bet, I mean."

"Nah, I'm good."

"Not really buying it."

"Because all men have an inherent weakness, right?" He smiles, though it's not something he wants to pursue much further. His last time with a woman was Lorelei, and before that there had been a string of ops which he, as always, had performed outstandingly. He doesn't miss it, because there isn't all that much to miss. Physical release is fine, but the manipulative, power gathering aspect of it is so deeply rooted into him that he mostly feels like the bother will never be quite worth it.

Kara's hand is still in his hair, pulling a bit harder.

"Quit thinking so hard, you're making my head hurt. I'm not telling you to go work her up for intel or recruit her for SciOps. I'm telling you to go give her a night to rememberer the holidays by, and coincidentally indulge in your very obvious and as of late rather neglected caregiver tendencies. Right, Grant?"

Right.

They end up in the girl's room on the tenth floor. He rather likes her, actually - she's clever and self assured, and not at all impulsive. For all the obvious interest between them, it takes Ward a respectable length of conversation to earn her stamp of approval. Her precaution of flat out telling her peers where she is going and with whom gets her his approval in turn. He actually tells her so, and whatever uncertainty was left between them ends up dispelled.

What happens next is a concentrated, highly attentive and very professional lavishing session, starring Ward's companion. Kara gives some awesome pointers from time to time, and this one has been spot on. Concentrating only on making the girl feel good with no further goals in mind goes a long way to putting him at ease. She's a bit embarrassed in the beginning about the fact that she doesn't get to reciprocate enough, but promptly forgets that she was supposed to be a responsible and active participant and just lets herself be taken care of. It's perfectly alright with Ward because her little cries of ecstasy are pretty much their own reward and he could be going this - and nothing more - for ages.

With some imagination and a lot of patience, he keeps at it for almost two hours, until the girl is so spent she just lays there blessed out and grinning. And she's clever, his almost engineer, because for all that she's tired, as soon as he stills she slides her gaze over him, takes in his body and his scars and the expression of his face, and suddenly moves up to flip them over. He lets her, otherwise it wouldn't work - and she presses down onto him, scraps her fingernails against his skin and whispers in his ear how much she liked it, how great he was and what a good boy he'd been, and he just... He had been having quite a memorable time already, but just like that he's completely gone, and the world is a dense liquid slowly flowing by while he slides under and stays there, wondering why it took him so long to figure out that something as straightforward as sex could be this intense. He isn't even sure it's an orgasm in the proper sense, because it doesn't end in seconds like all the orgasms do, and just goes on and on as the girl racks her nails against the back of his neck, and his mind keeps sliding down toward a space so deep and slow and safe that hidden knots he never knew existed inside him come loose and pliant and slowly dissolve.

He falls asleep with another person in the same room for the first time in his adult life. It doesn't last long - twenty minutes maybe, and as he wakes up he's himself again, but whatever came loose hasn't hardened again. The girl wakes some time later and they shower and come down so that Ward can safely leave her in company of her friends.

Not one minute after taking his leave, his phone vibrates.

"How was the threesome?" He asks in a way of greeting while scanning the lobby. He can't see Kara immediately, but then again he isn't trying all that hard.

"A bust. The SHIELD girl is looking around for you," she says like it's an everyday occurrence. "Wanna talk to her or wanna pass?"

He feels like groaning, if not at the situation then at Kara's handling of it, but he's too aware of the favor she's doing him. If she asks him about wanting to meet Skye, she'd of course already scouted the hotel and their surroundings for SHIELD or other parties. If someone else was nearby, Kara'd have let him know. If Skye had something ungainly up her sleeve, Kara'd warn him. She has his back so thoroughly, he needs to worry only about making the decision.

"Sure thing," he says. There is some professional curiosity and some personal curiosity, and overall? It's a why not feeling. "Tell her to come by?"

"I'll stay close," Kara says, and her tone makes it clear it's not an offer.

"Chill." He's not the mess he was after the vault, he can handle Skye or anyone, really. "Let's all go eat breakfast or something."

"Breakfast?"

"Well. Party leftovers. Bring the coffee?"

There is still enough expensive food on the tables to feed a small army, and the rare party guests who stayed behind are either too sleepy or too drunk to represent a security risk. Ward gathers some fresh fruit, some more champagne, some bread and cheese and three clean plates, and kicks back to wait. And fine, it's not exactly a "why not" feeling that he's having. It's, weirdly, an "always knew that this would come" one, for all that each and every one of their previous encounters had been unwanted, tense and cold. He has no idea what to expect of this, except that he must see it through.

It takes Kara some time to relay the offer to Skye, which makes it clear that Miss Bullets in the Back is in turn scared of ending up backstabbed. Finally both women come in through the main door, Kara first, no weapon in sight except three paper cups of coffee (which could be counted as a weapon depending on the temperature, the thickness of paper and most importantly on Kara's present mood). Skye trails behind, also weaponless. Her hair is matted, expression pinched and worn, clothes rumpled from days of travel. The word lackluster comes to mind, and it's not fair to her so he cuts all his profiling short and centers on helping Kara deal out the coffees.

They all sit down. Skye makes the point of looking him right in the eye, unflinching and defiant, of saying "hi" and "took some time to find you" and "your partner here is an awesome spy" in falsely assured voice.

"And an even more awesome friend," Ward smiles, because if it's the same post-vault you-are-a-psycho bullshit game Skye is after, this time he isn't exactly adverse (he'd win hands down today, and he feels like he should be given a pass for wanting to, after being on the condescending end of her remarks for way too long).

Kara grins, and it's a wolfish expression. Skye quickly becomes uncomfortable at the remark, a look Ward has never seen on her before. She had always been independent, sure of herself and outspoken, and it makes him wonder what happened to her to lose every of these unique qualities that made her Skye. There is an undercurrent of something that she has to say but doesn't want to come out with, and Ward chews the bits of sweet pineapple on his plate and waits politely.

"I'm not with SHIELD anymore," Skye comes out finally.

Which he already knew, of course, based on Kara's lack of consternation at her appearance in their town. How Kara knows, he's not quite sure, but the fact that she's unconcerned is good enough.

"You aren't really surprised," continues to press Skye.

"Sure am," he says. His knowing about her being on her own doesn't mean he could have easily predicted it. Last time he saw her, she stood unflinching guard over Director Coulson. He can't imagine just what kind of conflict Skye got into with him. Except the most obvious one, of course. The thing about Skye is - she might become an awesome operative, or a mediocre spy (she's too emotional for that), but she will never be a follower. No matter what desires had made her to heed someone else's orders for a while, her nature's free. It was the reason Ward was drawn to her in the beginning, the reason that - when she'd already given up her freedom for a cause stopped - he'd still tried to clumsily reset her on that old forgotten path.

"I used to call them governmental toolbags when I first met them," she huffs. "I joined up to spy on them... How do you figure that makes me a faithful SHIELD agent?"

"You weren't ever a SHIELD agent. Sure, you liked them all a lot, and you agreed with their policies from time to time, but you were no more SHIELD agent than I was. Everything you did, you did because of Coulson. If Coulson had told you to stop being an agent, you'd have gone away. If he had asked you to jump, you'd have jumped. Maybe not too high and not too eagerly, but you would have."

Skye frowns, which is how he knows not only that he's right, but that she knows it too.

"Which is precisely why I got away. I had to go before I could become you," she says, and it's a cold and mean thing to say, but he can't figure out if she wanted it quite that way. Probably not, because she frowns again and tries to soften her mistake a little. "Before I did things for others I'd never do for myself. Before I did something unforgivable."

"Happy to have been of use," Ward grins.

And maybe she's truly trying to insult him, and the words should sting, but the truth is - they don't. He never wanted her, or anyone, to go through things that he'd gone through. To burn down everything they'd hoped to one day hold dear, and only realize it after watching cinder cover the ground. To try to burn themselves in desperation afterwards - no, that could never be something that he wished on anyone. So yes, if knowing what he did and how he ended up did help her, then he's not going to resent it.

Skye frowns and raises her hand, and it's a telegraphed and somehow intimidating move for all its harmless appearance. She touches the champagne bottle between them and bubbles raise as soon as she disturbs the glass. She looks at the spectacle of twirling gold as if it was a revelation while bubbles continue to raise and the bottle overflows, all the while shaking visibly. Which is when she looks up at Ward with a wicked, daring expression, making it quite clear that she's the one behind it all.

"Cool," Ward says.

The glass explodes at Skye hearing this, the mantel gets all wet and crystal shards fly in his general direction. Ward puts his fork aside, because nothing on his plate is safe to eat after being peppered with glass. Skye's eyes go even darker and she gets a weirdly triumphant expression, like she had finally succeeded in driving the point home and making him afraid of her.

"I can destroy this entire town in just under an hour" she hisses, and at least half of it is poisoned bravado. Ward wonders if the half that remains hidden is a cry for help.

"Me too," he says as evenly as possible and hears Kara snicker to his left.

"But not in just under an hour," she says with mocking seriousness, as if this was some contest in destruction and depravity.

"No," he quickly concedes. "In under a day, though. The water depuration installations are some 50 km out, but I'd still need to find the best poison. Alternatively, there is an actual black weapons market 200 km north of here that handles nuclear, or so they say."

The ground shakes, and maybe he'd do well to stop fooling around and act as scared as Skye seems to want him to. He can see why she'd want to distance herself from SHIELD for now, knowing a thing or two about gifted and the battlefield that is the control of their abilities. He can't see where the raw fear of herself comes from, though. He only knows that he doesn't like it. Both because it reminds him of the hatred he used to feel for himself down in the vault, and because it's Skye. There is something inside him that won't allow him to stand by when she's hurt. He'd discovered it the moment she closed her hands around the straps of his chest plate after running to him dripping wet through Quinn's Malta mansion. No matter the changing sides, no matter the hurtful words, no matter even the goddamned bullets, he simply won't do it.

And for the first time in forever, he's completely alright with knowing it. There is no desperate shame clawing its way from inside, hissing in Garrett's voice that he's weak for it. There is no condescending voice ringing in his ears saying that he's a psycho or a stalker. There is no fear that everything he touches must be lied to and used by him, or else he will be the one to end up used. There is just him and Skye, and Kara looking on ready to slap him out of the worst screw ups

"In fact, each of the untrained, completely normal people you met walking through the lobby could take their car and drive it into the morning market crowd, each killing dozens. Except why would they? Or me? Or you? Weird powers don't make for dangerous people, Skye. Desperation does."

"And pitchforks," chimes in Kara. "Specially pitchforks held by righteous governmental agencies."

And knowing her, she has an entire speech lines up, because Kara's good at summarizing things up in a way that helps even the most confused souls find its way to safety. She doesn't get to start delivering it, though, because Skye's face just simply crumples. She doesn't cry, but it's a close thing, and she folds into herself trying to hide her not-quite-crying from them both, and this is not at all what Ward had hoped his mocking of her worries would do. It was supposed to put Skye at ease and to remind her that he'd been there and worse places. But then again, nothing he's ever tried with her has brought the desired effect.

"Sorry," he says quietly, but she doesn't react except to fold even further in her misery. The festive table is too big for him to lean across, so he stands up and kneels at her side to avoid hovering. He feels ashamed without knowing why, except he does - he'd started out this conversation enjoying the fact that he was happy and she was not, and what the hell is wrong with him? He'd never wanted to hurt her, not through misunderstanding and surely not in revenge or for whatever other reason. "Please, I didn't mean to make light of you, just tell me what you need and we'll figure it out, alright?"

Which is when he realizes that Skye is crying in all seriousness, big fat sobs racking her frame.

"Shut up," is the first thing he manages to understand, followed by a much clearer "you don't get it, so shut up!" He does, and also allows her to push his hand off her, except the moment that he lets her go she seems to get a grip and clutches his hand in hers tightly. "You don't get it, Ward. I'm the one who's sorry. I'm the one, OK? I. Me. I've been so blind and so... So proud of it... And... And... And..."

She slides down from her chair and they end up on the floor clutching at each other, saying sorry again and again like they can never say it enough times, yet both knowing that words are unnecessary between them by this point. It's awkward and disconcerting and pretty much throws a wrench into all Ward's plans, and he ignores the little voice in his head asking why all such moments in his life just have to do with Skye. He simply sits there and holds her, just like he sat on the floor of that Hydra base without making any attempt at standing up. It's different this time, though. Safe, for once, but also - this feels right. Not forced, not coerced, completely up to him. He chooses this, because he wants to. He chooses to think back on that one time they played Battleship and she made good natured fun of him for not knowing how to smile, and not the way she scolded him for not being able to kill himself efficiently enough. He chooses to remember the way she pulled him up after he'd collapsed under the Berserker staff and not the way she walked past the puddle of his blood on the ground and called herself his enemy.

Some time later, he feels Kara's hand shake his shoulder and hears her announce in her trademark stage whisper that she off to finally enjoy her damn threesome, and he better be up to watch his own back for a while, or else.

He nods gratefully and waves her off. He doesn't know where it all went wrong with Skye but he tells her that they'll figure it out together and urges her to get moving and to help him up (he might not be bleeding out this time, but sitting on the floor under her weight has left his legs almost asleep). For once, he feels completely confident in his assessment.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

This piece is now complete, but the series have been officially expanded to contain three fic. The second one will be a companion "5 times" piece from Skye's point of view in order to show her evolution during this time. The third one will be a conclusion with - drums roll - honest Skyeward interaction.

And Happy New Year to all!


End file.
